Reproduced cover image of the English language edition of "The Future of the Image" by Jacques Rancière, published by Verso.

The Future of the Image
Jacques Rancière and W.J.T. Mitchell,
6:15pm Wednesday 23 April 2008
Columbia University: Schapiro Center - 2960 Broadway New York, NY

With the waning dominance of Jacques Derrida and French post-structuralist thought in recent years, a younger generation of French intellectuals have been able to move into the international centers of attention and attract wide, cross-disciplinary readership. Few have been as successful as Jacques Rancière, a one time Young Althusserian, whose densely layered and ambitious writings on politics and aesthetics have been translated into several languages and distributed internationally. In his more recent short books like The Politics of Aesthetics and The Future of the Image, Rancière seeks a way of returning the question of the political to the realm of the aesthetic while emphasizing the lack of center in advanced visual practice as a liberatory model for a politics to come. Rancière's popularity in that vaporous system signified by the mainstream "art world" was perhaps calcified most clearly in last year's March issue of Artforum in which the journal re-published a revised edition of one of the philosopher's English language lectures (previously published by the Continuous Project collective), an interview between Rancière and artists Fulvia Carnevale and John Kelsey, and accompanying short texts by Kristin Ross, Bettina Funcke, Paul Chan, Liam Gillick, and Thomas Hirschhorn.

This Wednesday evening Columbia University will present a public talk between Jacques Rancière and critic and philosopher W.J.T. Mitchell on The Future of the Image. There is no RSVP service or reserved seating for this event, so early attendance is suggested.